254th Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)
254th Infantry Division |
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Troop registration |
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active | August 26, 1939 to May 8, 1945 |
Country | German Empire |
Armed forces | Wehrmacht |
Armed forces | army |
Type | Infantry division |
structure | See: Outline |
Second World War | Western campaign |
Commanders | |
Please refer: | List of commanders |
insignia | |
Identification symbol | rising horse |
The 254th Infantry Division was a major military unit of the Wehrmacht in the German Reich .
history
The division was formed on August 26, 1939 in Wehrkreis VI in Detmold as the 4th wave division from half of the supplementary units of the Wehrkreis.
The division attacked in May 1940 as part of the western campaign and reached Dunkirk .
On November 17, 1940, the division gave a third of its troops to the formation of the 320th Infantry Division : the staff of Infantry Regiment 454 and the III. Battalion of all three infantry regiments. In addition, the III. Department of Artillery Regiment 254, as well as parts of the division units. The taxes were replaced by new statements.
During the attack on the Soviet Union , the division fought its way across the Baltic States to Leningrad and then took positions on the Volkhov .
At the beginning of 1943, the division moved to the combat area south of Lake Ilmen and took part in the clearing of the Demyansk pocket : After the rail transport from Chudovo and Novgorod to the Staraya Russa area , the division moved on foot to the "hose" to Corps Group Hoehne to take along the battalions II./454, I./474 and II./484 in the section of the 225th Infantry Division at Lewoschkino, to replace the 225th Infantry Division by January 15, 1943, the bitter attacks on the land connection in the cauldron and together with the 123rd Infantry Division to secure the evacuation of the "Demyansk combat area". On February 27, 1943, the division went back behind the Robja line and took up positions at Staraya Russa.
Later the division, which was reclassified to a new type 44 division in the course of the year, moved back to the front on the Volkhov, but was transferred to Army Group South in early 1944 and got caught in the "wandering" Hube basin near Kamenets-Podolsk . After the breakout from the pocket, which was successful with heavy losses, the Grenadier Regiment 474 and III. Division of Artillery Regiment 254 disbanded on May 10, 1944 and replaced by the remains of the disbanded 82nd Infantry Division collected in the Buczacz area . On July 4, 1944, the remaining division group 82 was reclassified to Grenadier Regiment 474. The regiment was disbanded in April 1945 and replaced by the Grenadier (Fahnenjunker) Regiment 1238.
At the end of the war, the division was taken prisoner by the Soviets in the Deutsch-Brod area .
Storage and operational areas
Period | corps | army | Army Group | Operational area |
September 1939 | reserve | 5th Army | C. | Eifel |
October 1939 | XXII. | 4th Army | B. | Lower Rhine |
December 1939 | 6th Army | |||
May 1940 | XXVI. | |||
June 1940 | Reserve. | 18th Army | A. | Dunkirk |
July 1940 | VII. | 16th Army | Lille | |
August 1940 | XXIII. | |||
September 1940 | XXXVIII. | 9th Army | Rouen | |
May 1941 | I. | 18th Army | C. | East Prussia |
June 1941 | XXXVIII. | North | Riga | |
August 1941 | XXVI. | Reval | ||
September 1941 | reserve | Leningrad | ||
October 1941 | XXXIX. | 16th Army | Volkhov | |
December 1941 | 18th Army | |||
January 1942 | I. | |||
November 1942 | XXXVIII. | |||
February 1943 | II. | Demyansk | ||
March 1943 | X. | 16th Army | Staraya Russa | |
April 1943 | LIV. | Leningrad | ||
October 1943 | XXVI. | 18th Army | ||
February 1944 | XXXXVI. | 1st Panzer Army | south | Hube boiler |
April 1944 | ||||
May 1944 | LIX. | 1st Panzer Army | Northern Ukraine | Tarnopoly |
July 1944 | XXIV. | Carpathians | ||
July 1944 | XXIV. | |||
August 1944 | XI. | |||
October 1944 | A. | |||
February 1945 | XVII. | |||
March 1945 | VIII. | 17th Army | center | Silesia |
April 1945 | XXVI. | 1st Panzer Army | Upper Silesia | |
May 1945 | LXXII. | Moravia |
structure
- Infantry Regiment 454 (from 1943 Grenadier Regiment with two instead of three battalions)
- Infantry Regiment 474 (from 1943 Grenadier Regiment with two instead of three battalions)
- Infantry Regiment 484 (from 1943 Grenadier Regiment with two instead of three battalions)
- Fusilier Battalion 254 (from 1943)
- Artillery Regiment 254
- I./Artillerie-Regiment 52 ( surrendered on September 7, 1940 by Artillery Regiment 16 of the 16th Infantry Division , as it was converted into a tank division)
- Engineer Battalion 254
- Anti-tank department 254 (later tank destroyer department)
- Reconnaissance Department 254
- Field Replacement Battalion 254 (from 1943)
- News Department 254
- Divisional Supply Leader 254
- Division Group 82 (Spring 1944)
Commanders
date | Rank | Surname |
August 26, 1939 | Lieutenant General | Friedrich Koch |
April 30, 1940 | Lieutenant General | Walter Behschnitt |
May 1, 1942 | Major general | Friedrich Köchling |
September 5, 1942 | Major general | Hellmuth Reymann |
August 16, 1943 | Lieutenant General | Alfred Thielmann |
December 31, 1944 | Major general | Richard Schmidt |
Chiefs of Staff (Ia)
date | Rank | Surname |
1939 | major | Ludwig Zoller |
September 1940 | major | Gerhard Wagner |
August 1942 | Lieutenant colonel | Hans-Jürgen Freiherr von Ledebur |
June 1943 | major | Otto Walter |
May 20, 1944 | Lieutenant colonel | Wolfgang Oldenburg |
literature
- Clemens Freiherr von Boenninghausen: 254th (Rhenish-Westphalian) Infantry Div. in the east 1941-1945. Self-published.
- Werner Haupt: Demjansk, 1942. A bulwark in the east. Podzun, Bad Nauheim 1963, OCLC 10337054
- Werner Haupt: Army Group North 1941–1945. Podzun, Bad Nauheim 1967, OCLC 3954438
- Werner Haupt: Leningrad, Volkhov, Courland. Photo report of Army Group North 1941–1945. Podzun-Pallas-Verlag, Friedberg (Dorheim) 1976, ISBN 3-7909-0056-7 .
- Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945 . Volume 8: The Land Forces 201–280 . 2nd Edition. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 1979, ISBN 3-7648-1174-9 .
Web links
- 200th through 370th German Infantry, Security, and Panzer Grenadier Divisions. Organizations and Histories 1939–1945 ( Memento from February 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 461 kB), Nafziger Collection, Combined Armed Research Library.
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 51 ° 56 '11.3 " N , 8 ° 51' 58.2" E